National Theatre Connections

Students at the Academy's Theatre School were involved in the National Theatre's 'Connections' project that saw them perform The Snow Dragons by Lizzie Nunnery at Northern Stage Newcastle on 5 April 2017. The project will involved 250 youth theatres and schools to stage ten fantastic plays.

Connections is the National Theatre’s nationwide youth theatre festival. Each year it offers a unique opportunity for youth theatres and school theatre groups to stage new plays written for young people by some of theatre’s most exciting playwrights, and to perform in leading theatres across the UK.

Connections 2017 will involved at least 5,000 talented young people from right across the UK, both on and off stage, and inspire and entertain audiences with plays for and about young people that are current, challenging and resonant.

About The Snow Dragons by Lizzie Nunnery

Raggi and her friends spend their free time in the woods and mountains around their sleepy fjord town playing games of Vikings, dragons and war.

When soldiers occupy the town, they watch from their hut in the mountains: their friends and families beaten, silenced, abducted... Let down by the adult world they form The Snow Dragons, ‘the last line of resistance’ carrying out sabotage missions. But this is no game, and true courage requires great sacrifice.

About Lizzie Nunnery

Lizzie is an award-winning playwright.

Her play The Swallowing Dark, produced by the Liverpool Everyman and Theatre 503, was a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Other work by Lizzie includes the critically acclaimed Intemperance, produced by the Everyman, and Unprotected, which was awarded the Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression. Last year, Narvik opened in Liverpool and was described as a ‘thrillingly enigmatic memory play’ by the Guardian.

She is currently working on a new play with the Liverpool Everyman which is an adaptation of her radio play, The Sum, as well as on another literary adaptation, The Solitude of Thomas Cave.

She also writes extensively for radio and has penned numerous original dramas and adaptations for Radio 4.